It turned 11:00 before I washed my face tonight, which means it’s later than that now. I’ll regret the minutes that creep towards midnight (and possibly past) in the morning, but it seems lately that if I don’t open the computer (or journal or scrap pieces of paper) to write when I think of it, the thoughts fade into nothingness by the morning. I wish I could be the type of person to go to bed at an hour that ensures a decent night’s sleep. I wish I didn’t dread my alarm ringing next to my bed or the way it feels to change in the darkness, starting my day with everyone sleeping around me.
Many days I do it anyway, the abandonment of a warm bed always a shock, even when I know the run is worth it. Some days aren’t even a run, just a quick walk after shushing the cat to silence with a belly rub and his breakfast.
Last nights don’t always look the same around here. Usually someone is in bed and most of us aren’t, though the combinations of people change. Normally we go to bed in age order from youngest to oldest. Sometimes the spaces between those bedtimes are whispers, and other times they’re gaps of time, when laughter gets stifling behind hands and closed doors.
Abbey and I were looking through old photos tonight, trying to find one of her and her best friend, their hair in the kinky curls of brushed out braids, their smiles perfectly imperfect in the way they were before braces and lip gloss. Her friend turned 16 today, a whirlwind time of almost-driving and homecoming dresses and sleepovers still filled with giggled, whispered conversations.
I’m not sure why I opened the computer, why I began this post. Maybe to record the laughter before it fades into the darkness of a Wednesday night, the ephemeral nature of conversations happening in the middle of the week, when we’re tired and maybe a little sillier than we need to be as the clock inches closer to 11:00.
I wonder, sometimes, if these moments are glimmers of parenting done right (connection) or parenting that misses the mark (too late, too loud, too much bending over phones and pressing post). Maybe we don’t know until later, until the moments stack on top of each other to make a week, a month, a life.
I found the photo we wanted. I found so many photos that reminded me of a day or a pair of pants or sunglasses worn in the early days of Covid when we still found it novel to be on zoom instead of in a classroom. How quickly those days slipped into the past. How deeply they’re embedded in our psyches, entrenched in ways that delineate before and after.
Tonight, however, it’s past eleven, and I need to go to sleep. I hope the laughter echoes in my dreams.
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